The Confession

36

In the empty office I typed. It was in the form of a letter, and the only way I could write it was to think of it as fiction. It was addressed to “My dear wife” and listed, in detail, the reasons why the letter writer was leaving her. Why he was taking their child with him, why there was a reality to be faced up to and this lie could no longer be lived. He did not wish to hurt anyone, he said, but had no choice. He was sick of her evasions and the way she risked the family they had carefully tended for the past decade and a half. He didn’t understand why everything had failed in the end (he was gracious enough to take some of the blame), but he had stuck it out with the faith of a monk. He knew there was something higher than simple happiness, and he wished she understood this as well. But she understood nothing. So he would leave her, and take their daughter with him.

I tugged the sheet out of the typewriter and folded it into my jacket pocket without rereading it.

“More egocentric writing?”

Kaminski was in the doorway, arms crossed, smiling at me.

“You put in the hours, don’t you?”

I reached for my overcoat. “Sometimes.”

“You know what’s been on my mind lately, Ferenc?” He came over and leaned on my desk. “Kazakhstan. Remember me telling you about it a while ago? Well, the numbers are starting to come in, and it turns out I was right. We succeeded.” He smiled, his thin mustache rising. “From that area alone we’re harvesting twenty million tons of wheat. Twenty million! Sixty million from all the new regions, one hundred twenty- five million tons from the entirety of the Soviet Union! What do you think about that?”

He waited for an answer, so I nodded.

“It’s better than that, my boy. It’s a goddamn miracle. The largest yield in the history of the USSR.” His smile was expansive, and I made a halfhearted attempt to match it, but just as quickly it went away. “These kinds of things don’t impress you, do they, Ferenc?”

“It’s impressive,” I said.

He shook his head. “No it’s not. You’re only interested in the individual. Something you proved on November the sixth. Put you in a group, and you’ll always be the oddball, won’t you?”

I didn’t answer.

He pursed his lips and nodded at me. “How’s your case coming?”

“Slowly.”

“I thought so. It’s because you don’t work well in a team. It’s all over you. Maybe you should find a different line of work, Ferenc. Maybe I can help you out with that.”

I swallowed, too visibly. “What kind of work.”

“Does it matter?” He shrugged. “You’re a man who likes art. A fan of Vlaicu’s work?”

“Not really.”

“But all you boys went to his show. Now, that’s a surprise. You don’t see a lot of militiaman going in for art shows. It’s a little eccentric. But Stefan sure made an ass of himself, didn’t he?”

Although when he spoke his tone was light and conversational, his face, with its hard cheekbones and lips, did not match it. I didn’t know if he just wanted to scare me, or if there was a point to this. State security has always worked by diversion, and to imagine you know what any officer is thinking is pure fantasy.

“You do know, don’t you?”

I swallowed. “What?”

“That you and I will be face-to-face someday soon. I’m not the kind of man who forgets insults. Who ignores it when a man under my supervision embarrasses me in public.”

“I…I know.”

He drummed his long fingers on my desk, but kept staring at me. “There’s a reason you’re not eating your own waste in a prison cell right now.”

I wanted to ask for the reason, but my tongue was too heavy to move.

“This is the only reason you’re allowed to return to your family tonight. What do you want to ask me?”

My tongue was lead.

“Come on. You can do it.”

“What,” I managed. “What is the reason?”

He held up a finger. “No, Ferenc! No!” He shook the finger. “ That is the wrong question. The correct question is: How do I stay out of a prison cell even after having humiliated you in public, Comrade Kaminski?”

My dislodged tongue shifted. “How?”

He opened his hands. Smiled. “Simple, Comrade Kolyeszar. You work. You do your job to the best of your limited abilities. Bring in your killer, and perhaps, through the virtue of your good labor, I’ll find a way to rise above the insults of the past.”

I nodded, and right then all I wanted in this world was his forgiveness.

But he’d had enough. He waved me away. “Go on, Ferenc. Say hello to Magda and Agnes for me.” He winked. “Send them my love.”